"This tool is great for replacing retrospectives! It helps us to get the info we need.."

"I was skeptical at first, but once people started providing results I could easily see the benefits."

Meet Chris Hexton. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Vero. His company has eleven employees, with plans to double in size this year. As a team leader, Chris is responsible for understanding the current state of employee morale and making sure the team is highly productive.

Like most leaders, Chris used a few common techniques to keep tabs on the pulse of his team.

"I had 1-2 monthly one-on-ones with everyone on the team, and used this as a way to get feedback, but this was both non-regimented and obviously face-to-face."

Two Problems.

Chris continues, “The main problem was that feedback needs to be timely. It’s really easy to have an uplifting one-on-one and get positive feedback, but this does not capture each employee’s journey or how they’re trending."

"Another problem is that the face-to-face nature of those meetings make it very personal. It’s much harder to say 'we’re doing X, Y and Z badly' to the CEO’s face than in a well-considered email.”

Then Chris heard about Friday Feedback.

"I was prompted to check it out because I’d heard of one or two companies using more formal approaches to collecting feedback.

Friday Feedback handled the collection, the reminding, the charting, the aggregation of individuals’ feedback and so on. I was skeptical at first about the entire process….but ultimately decided it couldn’t hurt to try it."

Fast forward several months, and here's what Chris says now...

“Friday Feedback is proving very useful to me because it’s a central, consistent log of employee feedback.

"In a way, this is like analytics for our team."

The format gives employees a chance to be honest and considered in what they write and I’m finding that the feedback is much more actionable and also raw. Raw feedback is like raw data: it lets me make real decisions faster and with more insight.”

The best parts according to Chris:

"The individual reports on each employee that can be run and printed. This is superb to hand back to an employee and discuss their ups and downs at a one-on-one. It has made our recent one-on-ones much more effective."

"The kudos feature, which is new, seems like a real winner. It encourages interaction by giving employees another reason to engage: to thank each other."

"Friday Feedback gives everyone the opportunity to reflect on the help of their teammates and to give thanks."

Meet Shani Podl, the Vice President at Doran Scales, Inc. This year, they are celebrating forty years in business. Doran currently has 21 employees and is located in Batavia, Illinois.

Shani first found out about Friday Feedback from their marketing coordinator. According to Shani, "I’m always looking for ways to establish a very open culture and receive feedback from our employees."

Setup was effortless. Within a week, they were utilizing the service.

Favorite aspect of Friday Feedback:

According to Shani, "we all really enjoy the Kudos. It gives everyone the opportunity to reflect on the help of their teammates and to give thanks. We are all about gratitude and showing appreciation!"

From an employee perspective, Brandon says, "Friday Feedback definitely helps me improve at my job. Seeing how everyone feels impacts how I approach them the following week. Sometimes when someone doesn’t feel well, I will pull them aside and ask I can do anything to help them. Without Friday Feedback, I may not have known that they were having a difficult time."

Business Impact?

Shani says, "Friday Feedback allows us insight as to the functionality of our company that we may not normally have. We understand more what experiences people are having, the commonalities among different departments (maybe it’s one project that affecting a lot of different departments) and also how others help..."

Would you recommend?

Shani - "Most definitely as it gives a good pulse on what’s happening in your business. It also gives oversight that you may not otherwise see."

Brandon - " I would strongly recommend Friday Feedback to a fellow employee and have suggested it to my wife’s company. The more information you have amongst co-workers the better."